Space Forge blasts off with £8m seed round

Cardiff-based Space Forge, which plans to produce “super materials” in space using returnable satellites, has raised a $10.2m (£7.5m) seed round. It marks the largest-ever seed round for a space tech company. Investors include Type One Ventures, World Fund and SpaceFund. Space Forge aims to launch up to two missions next year. The start-up wants to use benefits of the space environment – microgravity, vacuum, and temperature – to create products impossible to manufacture on Earth.

Up.co charges up with £7m investment

Mobile phone charging and hand sanitiser network theUp.co has raised £7m to develop its ServedUp hospitality electronic payment app. Investors include drinks company Jägermeister and JamJar Investments, the venture capital fund run by the founders of Innocent drinks, along with former Monzo CEO Tom Blomfield. The company plans to bring together its ServedUp and ChargedUp apps under the original ChargedUp brand.

C5K smashes £4m crowdfunding campaign

CIRCA5000 (C5K), the ethical investment app, closed a £3.9m crowdfunding campaign on CrowdCube, bringing its total raise to more than £10.5m. C5K has launched a personal pension service, which gives customers the power to choose what they in invest in from C5K’s range of social or environmental investments. The impact investing market grew by 42.2% last year to $715bn.

Cogsy stocks up on £4m seed round

Cogsy, the data and supply chain management platform for e-commerce SMEs has raised a $6m (£4m) seed round led by Accel. Bain Capital Ventures also participated in the round. The platform helps small business e-commerce sites to not buy unwanted stock, while tracking which products are most popular and you should order more of.

Aikido Finance aims for £4m funding round

Aikido Finance, the Irish cloud-based investment service, wants to raise €5m (£4.2m) to grow its subscription business, which offers small investors the same data-driven investment strategies used by financial institutions. Seventy-five per cent of millennials and Gen-Z are planning to get involved in investment through trading platforms, according to studies. Aikido Finance makes algorithmic trading available to everyone, not just those with coding knowledge, finance backgrounds and access to large amounts of capital. Aikido recently closed a €900,000 seed funding round from including US VC firm GoAhead Ventures.

More Deals of the Week

Deals of the week Dec 13 to Dec 17 – a GrowthBusiness roundup